A Veneer of Vanity
by Batman'sBeauty18
Summary: Captain Jack Harkness sees the T.A.R.D.I.S. leave and then he's all alone. Maybe his first impressions were right after all. Oneshot.


**A/N: This is my first endeavor into the world of Doctor Who/Torchwood and I am very excited. I have only experienced the 9th and 10th doctors, which is why I am not really going to write anything about them, as it would undoubtedly contradict something said in some episode or movie involving the previous doctors. His companions however, are fair game. So here we go, my first Jack fic! And the title is a sort of play on a line in the movie V for Vendetta, I thought it matched Jack perfectly. The actual line is "this visage, no mere veneer of vanity..." If you don't understand what the actual title means, you might want to look up the words...but wait! I've done that for you already: visage- appearance, veneer- to cover, with the attention of making something more visibly pleasing. Yes...well...anyways...This is sort of a tag to The Parting Of The Ways. You don't need to have seen Torchwood to understand any of this. So read, review, and imagine that you are snogging Captain Jack Harkness! (By the way...I'm American but I am going to try really hard not to completely butcher the English accent. Although there isn't one in here since its just Jack but if I did a Torchwood one with the other characters then I would have to be careful...And why am I telling you this? It has nothing to do with this story. Anyways, read on! Oh right... close parentheses-- )**

Tile: This Visage, a Mere Veneer of Vanity

Spoilers: The Parting of The Ways

Summary: First impressions can be very wrong. Yet...as Jack watches the Doctor desert him, he wonders if they were right after all.

Disclaimer: If the whole Doctor Who, Torchwood franchise was mine it would be airing in America right now! Its not. So its not. don't.

_Reviews are, as always, appreciated, welcomed, adored, embraced, kissed, lavished with affection, and well you get the idea. Please excuse this ridiculously verbose author's note, as I was slightly delusional from lack of sleep when I wrote it. Now, really and truly, here is the story!!!  
_

Jack didn't like many people. So many were too stupid, too scared, too selfish, or just too ignorant for him to ever truly connect with. Yet if you asked anyone that ever met him, they would never even think that there was a possibility that Captain Jack Harkness didn't adore them. That was one of the reasons Jack had survived for so long in a harsh universe that had killed so many others, it was also the reason he had been fairly successful as a con man: he had been blessed with looks that attracted both men and women, and a personality that did the same.

When he had first met Rose he had figured her for another blind, blond, bumbling British girl who had found herself a lover who just happened to have a time machine. He was probably ugly and stupid, smart enough to travel through space and time but so desperate for love that we wouldn't stop to think about why a beautiful girl like Rose bothered with him. Jack saw that sort of thing all the time, sometimes there was only one girl, and more often there were a handful. In fact, he wouldn't have been surprised to see some Rose clones running around, desperate to service their beloved. Yet Rose had been the opposite of what he had expected, and the Doctor even more so. The Doctor was brilliant, beautiful and insane, driven positively mad by an unknown past.

He had gladly sacrificed his life and ship to save the Doctor and Rose because they were an endangered species: a pair, a man and woman, a human and a time lord, both unique in their own ways and both totally different then what he assumed. They were people he could respect and connect with, and that was rare. The fact that the Doctor seemed almost impervious to his charm and looks was almost a super power in and of itself. Rose too, although she flirted back was never about to run off with him, madly in love. Yet he had thought that it was just them, the two of them that wandered around the edge of time and space in their police box, exploring and learning and fixing and helping and creating. So he had been happily surprised when they had come for him, inviting him into their world. He had adopted it as his own, had become fond of the Doctor and Rose and had started to let his barriers down. Barriers that he had built up after years and years of ignorance, after getting his memory erased, after years of conning and being conned. He had thought that he had finally found a place where he could relax, even just slightly.

But then the Oncoming Storm had lived up to his name: Jack had predicted sunshine yet suddenly he found himself swept up in a tornado. He and the Doctor had worked to the last second, fighting to destroy those that had taken everything from the Doctor. Jack had imagined that the Daleks had taken his memory, had hurt him in the same way they had wounded the Doctor, just to drudge up that last bit of anger, hoping it to be enough. And it had, as he had bravely stood and faced his death. And for the first time since he could remember, his mind was not crowded with lingering regrets. Instead he felt a cold sense of satisfaction that he had done all he could. He knew the Doctor would find a way out, he knew that Rose would be safe, because the Doctor was the Doctor.

Doctors fix, they don't hurt or harm, they heal and in his own way the Doctor had put in the place the first motions, the first seeds, towards repairing a broken mind, a broken heart, a broken soul. And then…he had left. Deserted him. Just…gone. In an instant, leaving him so alone in a giant space station orbiting a planet he sometimes called home, not explaining why Jack hadn't died, why the Daleks were destroyed, why, why?

And then Jack had been back to where he had started. Plundering around, searching for someone, anyone to give him the answers he so desperately sought. But there was no one else alive, and he was on his own. He had not felt this helpless since he had woken up, that day so long ago, and had realized that two years were missing from his memory. He hated this feeling of needing, needing some or something, not being able to rely on himself. He threw things, anything and everything within reach and hurled them about the station, needing to do something with the pent up energy in side him. He didn't realize that he had been throwing things at the sheet of glass that separated him from the vacuum of space. On a normal day nothing less then a bomb could penetrate the hull but it was already so stressed from the past events that the glass gave way under the constant barrage of hurled objects. Jack was sucked out, fully exposed to the hard vacuum of deep space and for the second time in 24 hours, Captain Jack Harkness experienced death.

_Review or Perish! Not really, but if a get positive responses I might write another chapter._


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